Origin

The Anglo-Saxons suffered from warts—the word is first recorded around ad 700, and we have an Old English charm for getting rid of them. The expression warts and all, meaning ‘including features or qualities that are not appealing or attractive’, dates back to the mid 19th century. The source of the phrase can be traced back to Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England ( 1763), in which he recounts a request supposedly made by Oliver Cromwell to the portrait painter Peter Lely: ‘Remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me; otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.’